Pool shrinks for AL Cy Young, MVP, ROY jurors

• Reported 12/11/08, the Dallas Morning News reassigns Texas Rangers beat writer Evan Grant to football.

"Under the plan being considered, the (Dallas Morning) News would no longer have a beat reporter for the Texas Rangers; the Dallas paper would get its coverage of the baseball team from the S-T (Ft. Worth Star-Telegram).

• "A sign that this will take place was the recent reassignment of the News’ Evan Grant to the Dallas Cowboys beat. Grant was the paper’s principal writer on the Rangers, and
• no one has replaced him.
• The reason for combining sports coverage is simple: cost.

Travel expenses for a baseball writer can hit $50,000 per season, not to mention salary and benefits. Under the shared content agreement, four to eight sportswriters and editors at each paper could lose their jobs, the sources said."...

• Loss of an AL beat writer means another occasion for longtime BBWAA official Jack O'Connell to personally influence post season league baseball awards. O'Connell has for many years selected his own voters to fill in various gaps. (per 11/16/05 RiverfrontTimes.com)

• 11/16/05 article Riverfront Times describes events after the Atlanta Journal Constitution withdrew its writers from Cy Young, MVP, and ROY voting:

(11/16/05): "Though the pool of writers has been shrinking for years, the Journal-Constitution's withdrawal was particularly problematic because it compelled the

• BBWAA to assign an Atlanta vote outside the Atlanta market. The Journal-Constitution's MVP vote

• went to ESPN.com's Jayson Stark, based in Philadelphia.

• Stark put Pujols at the top of his ballot.

The region's other MVP ballot was cast by Travis Haney of Morris Publishing Group, which owns three papers in Georgia. Haney, the sole Braves beat writer to vote for NL MVP, says he picked Pujols as well.***

• "The Atlanta thing really bothered me," says BBWAA secretary and treasurer Jack O'Connell. "I was always worried that a one-newspaper town would do this.

• I've been permitted for the last eight years now to use national writers in emergency situations, but I'm never really comfortable with it. I'd much rather get people who are there."

Houston Chronicle sportswriter Richard Justice tapped Jones. But he says it may have been his last MVP vote.

• "I personally think there are too many issues that smack of conflict for us to continue," Justice comments via e-mail. "My sports editor hasn't decided, but I'd guess he's leaning the same way. There's no way of getting around the fact that many players have
• bonus clauses for these awards."

"I think if you were just now starting the [BBWAA] awards, there's almost no way it would be set up the way it currently is," posits Mike Berardino of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. "When baseball writers started this way back [in 1931], there were no clauses of any sort.""... (from RiverfrontTimes.com, 'The Times, they are a-Changin,' 11/16/05 by Ben Westhoff

• ***Gordon Wittenmyer in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, 11/7/05, (publication date also listed as 11/10/05) had a different version of whom Jack O'Connell chose for Atlanta's 2nd vote. He says someone from Minneapolis got it:

(Wittenmyer, 11/7/05):"The predicament was underscored in this year's NL MVP balloting. With nobody from the only daily in Atlanta allowed to vote this year,

• O'Connell used national writers from the Philadelphia and Minneapolis-St. Paul chapters to cast

• the two MVP ballots for the Atlanta chapter.

• That meant no writer who covered Atlanta's Andruw Jones, one of the top three MVP candidates in the NL this year,

voted on the award." ( I posted relevant portions of the article on July 1, 2006 when I found it which remain as I copied them. I didn't make a link, but have recently put in links to the article now archived at accessmylibrary.com. I also printed out a copy of the article when I first found it, as articles like it are impossible to find).

• No one dares question anything about the BBWAA and Jack O'Connell's longtime influence on baseball awards via his selection of voters. Partly because most people who read or write baseball blogs would give anything to be a member of BBWAA themselves. Or at least find work related to MLB, ESPN, etc. Once in the fold, various perks keep members subservient to the hierarchy (celebrity, money, and immortality). They dare not stray too far.

In any case, selection of voters/jurors, is the momentous event. It determines who will win and who will lose.

• Sabathia had $2 million reasons not to keep anything in the tank for the 2007 post season.

• 7/21/06, Jack O'Connell of BBWAA replies to my e-mail

1/11/09: Ft. Worth Star-Telegram: "The Star-Telegram and The Dallas Morning News announced today that they have agreed to share some of their sports coverage.

Beginning Feb. 1, the Morning News will be responsible for basic coverage of the Dallas Mavericks and Dallas Stars that both papers will use, while

• the Star-Telegram will provide coverage of the Texas Rangers.

Coverage of the Dallas Cowboys will not change.

Both papers expect to supplement the coverage of all three pro teams, and the work of their local columnists will continue to be exclusive."...1/11/ article via Poynter.org/Romenesko

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